


triquetra

by fightingtheblankpage



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, shallow interpretation of pagan beliefs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtheblankpage/pseuds/fightingtheblankpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She took everything that she thought made her weak, packed it into black bags, because she wanted to be strong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	triquetra

**Author's Note:**

> This was promised as my 'Hello there' to the travel_in_packs comm. Fun fact: the place where I started writing it is 1500 km from the place from which I'm posting it. More important fun fact: If you enjoy this fic, it's because of eak_a_mouse, my inspiring Beta for this piece, who helped me take a good long look at my writing and appeared to magically know what I want to say, even if I had trouble with putting it into words. Thank you. Even if I'll never look at Chris Argent again without blushing.

After the dust settles and they all go back to their lives, Allison spends a long time looking at her reflection in the mirror. The expressionless face that she sees still aches from how she’s been trying to mould it into something dark and different. Allison looks at the bow and the crossbow, both destroyed, at the knives, both bloodstained, and considers what she has left.

She took everything that she thought made her weak, packed it into black bags, because she wanted to be **_strong_**.

She threw herself away. Made herself weak.

She was weak, and she let Gerard manipulate her, and so now, Allison tries to start afresh. She packs up the hunting gear, but can’t make herself unpack the drawings, dresses, and little trinkets that used to litter her room. It leaves her with nothing but weapons she doesn’t want to have a use for and spaces she can’t fill, and she wonders if she was supposed to get so old.

She craved power and control, and somewhere she went wrong. There is power in knowledge, a different kind from Allison with a weapon in her hand. She seeks it through all the records and books that are kept in the Argent house. Allison reads them: the bestiaries and journals. Maybe if she knows everything there is to know about evil, she will finally be able to tell it apart from good.

She doesn’t find Gerard Argent in any of the books about monsters. This is wrong – one doesn’t have to be a creature of claws and fangs to be evil. Humans are perfectly capable of that, too. She starts suspecting that the books lie, and she needs to make her own judgments.

***

The pack lets her in. There are hardly two people in it who don’t hold any grudge against each other, and it makes their tentative bonds more real. They trust each other because they’ve seen each other at their worst. Allison watches it all and makes notes in her head. Is a pack more or less than a family? And if this is a family, what does it make Allison and her Dad, the only Argents left?

Allison has heard the rest of the pack – not Scott, never Scott – talk about her. They say she hasn’t been herself. Scott is patient and gentle, and careful with her. Allison tries not to feel as if it’s a selfish brand of kindness, as if Scott can still love her, if only he can believe her to be blameless. Allison shies away from him, feeling strangely confined.

Surprisingly, it’s Erica who reaches out to Allison. Allison recognises her short skirt and red lipstick for what it is – a different kind from the one Allison wore for so long, perhaps, but a mask nevertheless.  Erica is shy beneath the bravado; quiet in her steps and loud in the curves of her body. The last time they were standing so close to each other there were arrows, not words.

 “You can’t **_not_** be yourself,” Erica tells her, all false carelessness. “That’s the whole point. I’ve read it somewhere, I think – that we have everything inside us already, it’s just circumstances that change, not us. Whatever you’ve done, it wasn’t anything you were forced into. Just‒ you. You can’t change that. What you **_can_** do is, you can use it better. All that wicked weapon skills.” She makes an all-encompassing gesture. “And everything else you are, too. Who knows.”

She makes a sharp sort of movement with her hand, red-red-red nails slashing the air. Allison is almost sure this is something Derek has told Erica about her change. Erica was brave from the start, and strong, and fierce. It turns out Allison was‒ And here it is, the space where a word would fit if Erica dared to say it.

Allison is perched on the stairs leading to the Hale house, looking at the woods where the wolves have disappeared. They’ve taken her in, but Allison doesn’t fit as easily as Stiles does, making himself at home in the kitchen, raiding Derek’s cupboards for snacks.

Erica sits next to her, crossing her legs at the ankles and staring at her own shoes, high-heeled and impractical. Allison has seen that heel going through the hand of an omega, bone giving way, Erica’s eyes steady.

“I’m the one who ran away,” Erica says. “They tell me that I didn’t, but‒”

“You did,” Allison says crisply. “You ran away and I betrayed all of you.” And there is an ‘all of us’ now, but they both hedge around in and pretend it doesn’t sit strange with them. Allison was supposed to be a solitary huntress, and Erica was lonely so long she doesn’t know how to just **_belong_** somewhere.

 “Yes.” Erica nods, and then, after a moment, “Thanks for saying that. Boyd wouldn’t. Or Isaac.” Erica still has trouble acknowledging that there are more people she needs to count in, and more people who will count on her in return.

“We’re not breakable, and we won’t break from the truth” Allison says. “We’re not fragile.”

“Yes,” Erica says again. She settles, calms down a little, and Allison feels as if they are frozen in-between this being two strangers confiding in each other and so much more.

“I am sorry I shot you,” Allison says, because she feels like this is something that needs to be ended between them. And mostly because Erica in now watching her, head tilted to the side, eyes too keen.

Erica laughs, short and low. “You were fighting. You thought you are right.” There is something like professional respect in Erica’s voice.

 “It’s nice having another girl in the pack,” Erica says, easy acceptance.

The simple, comfortable thing to say would be ‘It’s nice being in the pack’, but that’s not really the truth, and the edge in Erica’s smile tells her that it’s not what she’s looking for here anyway. A promise that it’s all going to be fine. That Allison will have her back. All kinds of things Allison isn’t willing to give her just yet. Allison was programmed to be wary – she rises to the challenge.

***

Erica can be surprisingly sneaky when she wants to. Allison recognises her usual method of seduction: all boldness and deceitful sway in her hips, and that’s what she expects. So when Erica tries small smiles and casual sprawling on the Argents’ living room couch, Allison falls for it.

They talk and they watch movies that all their classmates watched while they were busy fighting this invisible war, and they are young, and they are free to do this. Allison is a bit light-headed with the realisation, dizzy with having someone who **_knows._** Just knows, silently and with no repercussions to it. They don’t mention the times when they were enemies, but Allison knows that Erica thinks about it, just like she does.

It’s like she gets to be a kid again, even if the air in the Argent house is heavy with guilt and mourning. Allison feels like when she was a child and cried for a long time, until she fell asleep, to wake up with her throat scratchy and her eyes puffy, but with daylight outside.

Erica laughs a lot, and it’s another laugh than the one around the pack. It’s a giggle over handsome actors in movies, a polite and somewhat shy thing when she’s talking to Allison’s Dad, who is suddenly just that, a friend’s father, not a man bent on hunting her down.

And now, as they’re sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch and talking over the movie, it’s a graceless snort that she tries to cover with her hand. Allison watches her, sort of fascinated by the carefree girl she’s presented with in place of the fierce werewolf she came to know.

“Oh god, I think I got my makeup all over the place thanks to you,” Erica says, dabbing at her eyes. They are fine, they are an illusory imperfection that only increases Erica’s beauty  – even the small smudge of red from her lipstick sneakily smeared towards her cheek looks like it’s been planned.

“Oh god, six months ago I wouldn’t have believed that you’d say something like that.” Allison mocks her tone, but it’s meant to be playful, not hurtful.

“Six months ago you wouldn’t have noticed my existence,” she says, waving all Allison’s protests away.

“I was the new girl,” Allison says. Her eyes keep straying to that escaping splash of colour. “I wasn’t noticing anyone.”

“You noticed Lydia,” Erica says. “And Scott.”

It’s the order of the names in which she places them that tells Allison something, and she tries to unravel the enigma that is Erica, but it’s hopeless. One can only try to keep up with her, and just as inevitably fail.

“Funny how it took getting the Bite from Derek to get me to hang out with the hunters’ daughter,” Erica says, like she’s trying to get the answer out of Allison with jokes, and **_she_** is teasing, but also hoping for something. But it’s true, so Allison says nothing. After a moment, Erica stops giving her her best wolf-like grin and just rests her head on Allison’s shoulder, curls tickling and getting in the way. Allison doesn’t say anything to that, either.

***

Lydia takes the stage when she’s ready to do so. She stalls and keeps her distance, wounded by their indifference and her forced ignorance, but too proud to admit they’ve hurt her. She takes her time, plans her move, and it would be brilliant, really – but Allison was born to be a strategist, and in that one aspect, Allison wins.

She has no idea **_what_** she wins or what the game is about. She just knows that they are playing, all three of them.

She also knows that with Lydia there, it’s suddenly not a light-hearted thing Erica and her pretending not to notice.

In the beginning Lydia made Erica uneasy. Her queen bee personality is something that Erica associates too much with her human days. Lydia makes it obvious that she’d rather hang out with Allison than both of them, to the point where it feels like being back in elementary.

Allison drags Lydia out of the room one day, painfully aware of the fact that Erica is perfectly capable of overhearing them.

“Just‒ Stop it, Lydia,” Allison says. Except all the accusations feel ridiculous, especially when Lydia’s face is painted with innocence.

Lydia bats her thick eyelashes, her eyes big and her mouth almost pouting, prettily hurt. Lydia uses this expression when she **_wants_** people to think her stupid and naïve. Allison hates that it’s directed at her.

 “Stop what?” Lydia asks. The mask flickers-disappears, and now she’s looking straight through Allison, calculating. It’s the true Lydia, the one of whom Allison has grown so fond.

“Treating her like she’s a nuisance. I want her here.” And it’s true. Allison **_likes_** , genuinely likes having Erica around. And it’s been so long, it would seem, since she’s had friends and not convenient allies. But she also likes Lydia, and she wants Lydia to stay. What she truly wants is both of them to stay.

Lydia smiles, an echo of the way Erica sometimes smiles, but with pride overpowering flirtation. “I vow to change my ways,” she says, crossing her heart. Allison’s eyes follow Lydia’s fingers when she draws a cross over her breast. Lydia uses the same hand to brush it across Allison’s cheek, almost fondly, like Allison’s a petulant child.

Allison knows she’s done the wrong thing exactly the moment she catches the glint in Lydia’s eyes. She may not know much, not understand much anymore, but she’s pleased to say she knows Lydia and Erica, together or separately.

Lydia sits next to Erica on the bed, and despite everything that is heavy in the air, Allison still feels slick jealousy, deep in her insides, because of **_how_** they are and **_who_** they are. Allison wants that, too – but she doesn’t know whether she wants to **_be_** that, or to have that in her hands.

Erica is uneasy, withdrawn as she shifts her gaze from Allison to Lydia. Lydia pats her cheerily on the thigh, where the denim of hear jeans is tight and artistically ripped. “Allison says I should stop toying with your fragile emotions,” she singsongs.

“You should,” Erica says, frowning. Lydia laughs like this is a brilliant joke, like there is nothing more innocently amusing than Erica, with her red lips and aggressive cleavage.

It’s not what Allison has said, at least not in those words. Lydia makes her out to be an exasperated mother, chiding her two kids. Allison opens her mouth to say as much, and she stays in that position, her world tipping, losing balance, turning upside down and then staying this way, defying all the rules.

When Lydia breaches the space between her and Erica, it’s slow but deliberate. Erica doesn’t pull back, despite the fact that she’s got all the chance in the world to do so. Instead she lets Lydia fit her lips against hers, and from where Allison is sitting she can see how soft they must be, how Lydia’s lip-gloss slides against Erica’s lipstick.

When Lydia pulls back, her eyes mischievous but her blush giving her away, her lips cling to Erica’s for just a fraction of a second that sends Allison’s heart racing. She’s never watched a kiss with such intensity, never felt it tingling in her own lips like that.

The best (worst) thing is how Lydia is smiling at Erica. But Erica is looking at Allison. And Allison lets the time unfreeze, “I’m happy for you.”

This isn’t the right answer. This isn’t even the right **_thing_** to do – she should get up and leave, but she doesn’t, transfixed by two pairs of eyes on her. Allison feels like she’s taking a step backwards in this game they’re playing, and Lydia looks at her reproachfully, but lets it go. Sometimes Lydia is like that – gives people some room, makes them comfortable, so that when she attacks, she takes it all.

***

When Allison does her reading, Lydia keeps her company by being in the same room and being **_Lydia_**. Allison tries to keep her eyes trained on the book, sometimes reading a particular paragraph out loud, but it’s hard, especially with Erica also there – and this is almost a rule, that where Lydia goes, Erica trails after her. Erica is unobtrusive and quiet, and it’s even worse. The way she’s curled against Lydia’s side where they are half-lying on Allison’s bed. The way she plays with Lydia’s strawberry blonde hair or her slim hand. The way she lets Lydia drop sweet, lingering kisses to her temple, to her cheek, to her nose.

They both like to pretend the affections are unwanted – Lydia tries to erase her fond smiles with exaggerated eye-rolls, like it’s a chore, having an armful of blonde vixen; Erica scrunches her nose when Lydia’s fingers touch her, like it can keep Allison from seeing the warmth in her eyes. Sometimes Allison’s gaze strays to them and she aches so bad she has to close her eyes for a moment, just to regain composure. She tries taking calming breathes to center herself, just like during archery practices.

 “What are you reading about?” Lydia asks her, but her fingers are tracing patterns over Erica’s forearm, with Erica’s arm posing as Lydia’s pillow.

“It’s a journal of one of my ancestors,” Allison says. “He writes about werewolf packs in England, and how some of them still keep – well, had kept in his times – the pagan beliefs. Three goddesses, that sort of thing. Their leaders were women, just like in my family.”

“Three goddesses?” Erica asks. Her voice is sleepy and lazy, eyes half-closed. Her languid pose lends a dream-like quality to the atmosphere in the room.

Lydia starts explaining, and Allison rests her cheek in her palm to listen to her. Lydia sounds like a teacher as she speaks. “They had one goddess, we could call her Mother Earth, but she had three faces, just like the moon has three phases. There is the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.”

 “So there were three of them,” Erica mumbles into Lydia’s hair.

“Yes and no. The Maiden is the Mother is the Crone. None of them can exist without the rest, and there is a little bit of each in all the others.”

“The Maiden is the Mother is the Crone,” Allison echoes. The words are strangely familiar, and they find their way inside her mind, where they settle – a feather-light reminder of something she’s been missing.

“Like us,” Erica says. It’s a sigh in her sleep, and Lydia smiles, yes, exactly like them. Her eyes are trained on Allison, challenging and melancholic at the same time. Her fingers work their way into Erica’s blonde curls, and Allison knows she’s already seen this, that this is for her benefit. And yet she doesn’t take her second chance.

It seems like three is the number for Allison.

***

They end up where they’ve begun, on the steps leading to the Hale house. Allison is trailing squiggles in the dirt with her finger, with Erica seated two steps above her and Lydia rummaging in her car’s trunk.

“I brought some music,” Lydia says. “A few CDs and an old CD player. This house is too quiet, not the normal quiet, just‒ wrong.” She trails off, but doesn’t stop pushing things around. Not for the first time Allison wonders what it does to Lydia, to be in the house from her hallucinations and to see the man from her nightmares.

“What are you drawing?” Erica asks. She leans over Allison’s shoulder, their cheeks almost pressing together. Allison is reminded of the times they’ve spent like that, watching the TV and laughing carelessly. It seemed like nothing back then, but now it carries significance Allison wishes she’s noticed earlier.

Allison looks down to the ground, too. She hasn’t been really paying attention, her arm moving without any conscious choice on her part. “Just doodling,” Allison says, but it’s not really true. It’s one symbol, over and over again. Intertwined lines, without a beginning or an end, crossing to form a whole. Three points, each connecting with the others.

“A triquetra,” Lydia says, crouching in front of Allison. Her hand goes to rest on Allison’s knee. They both pretend it’s for balance, but really, Allison is overly aware of Lydia in front of her, and Erica behind her.

She’s warm all over, and she’s not the girl she was when she came to Beacon Hills, but neither is she the huntress. Allison is‒ this. A part of a whole that is threefold. She’s needed here, and not only because she can shoot, or be ruthless, or knows how to kill.

Allison is needed because Lydia and Erica want her gentleness to be a cushion between them. They crave the way she has brought them together on instinct. The way she draws them in, and lends them her strength.

Just like Erica is needed, for her charm that is really just a mask for her dagger-sharp spirit. How she’s something reborn, the beginning of something new, like a chance waiting to be taken.

Just like Lydia is needed. Smart and manipulative Lydia, with the dark secret of her immunity unresolved, and with its mark forever inside her. The finished effect of a long process of transformations.

Or maybe not, maybe it doesn’t work like that at all. Allison feels like she tries to ascribe them those roles, to make it all easier for her, simpler to fit into, when in fact, the lines are blurred.

The Maiden is the Mother is the Crone.

Allison gives in to this, for once not even wanting to **_know_** what she’s starting (taking part in, ending?). She tips her head back, relaxed in the way it’s this easy to, just let it go. Her lips brush against Erica’s cheek, and then Erica is leaning in at an angle that **_must_** be uncomfortable. She catches Allison’s lips, her hand curling around Allison’s hip.

Erica’s kiss is giddy and fitting around their smiles. It’s different and new, this softness that’s all withheld lupine energy. Allison hums into it, nearly lost, until she feels a kiss being pressed to her wrist.

She pulls away from Erica, already missing the contact but also desperate to not let Lydia feel left behind. Lydia claims the space between Allison’s thighs, rising on her knees to cross the height difference that is there even when they aren’t standing.

Lydia’s kiss manages to convey how triumphant she is. It’s more forceful than Erica’s, with a scrape of teeth and fingers digging into Allison’s knee and hand. Lydia nibbles lightly at Allison’s bottom lip before pulling back, and looking at Allison and Erica with wide, pleased eyes – like they are something she’s built and is proud of.

And Allison is caught in that good place where your heart is racing with the first kiss; the kind of first kiss that you know for a fact is a starting point of a list of other first kisses, all of them unique. She’s leaning against Erica, with Erica’s arms wrapped around her middle, and Lydia is perched in front of her like a satisfied cat.

 “When you’re done,” comes a gruff voice from behind Allison, “come inside. Boyd is bringing pizza for everybody.”

Allison twists her head to look at Derek, just as Erica and Lydia scramble to their feet. They’re too busy stealing small touches to notice, but a corner of Derek’s mouth isn’t downturned in annoyance, which is a Derek-equivalent of a smile. The way he’s looking at them is easy, like nothing monumental happened. Maybe because the kisses are just a confirmation.

 “Have you heard that story, too?” Allison asks, remembering that the symbol on the tattoo on Derek’s back also means ‘three’.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek says. He’s giving her that annoyed, tired look that is usually reserved for Stiles. And this, more than anything else, tells Allison that she may be on to something here.

Allison doesn’t feel like defining it or asking, though. All she cares about is Lydia’s small hand slipping into hers, and how Lydia tugs Erica behind her.

She’s content with not knowing some things, and letting other things go. The answer she’s been searching for in her empty room is here and now. And this place she wanted to carve for herself? It was already here, waiting, not between Erica and Lydia, **_with_** them.

_~fin~_


End file.
